Wastewater-algal cultivation is a promising means of recovering polluting nutrients and converting them into useful algal biomass. However, open raceway ponds used for wastewater-algal cultivation are prone to contamination by zooplankton, which often severely reduces algal yields. We conducted an experiment to test the potential for bluegill sunfish to improve yields by suppressing zooplankton. We used cages to protect the fish from the paddlewheels in 230-L raceway ponds. In nine raceways, the cage surrounded the paddlewheel and fish, if present, had access to the remaining tank area. In another nine raceways, the cage was on the opposite side from the paddlewheel, and contained the fish when present. Six fishless controls were implemented across both cage placements. We filled the raceways with synthetic wastewater and local plankton, and one juvenile bluefill sunfish (aside from controls). After 19 days we sampled dissolved nutrients, algae, and invertebrates in each raceway. This dataset consists of four csv files containing data from laboratory analyses of these samples. The data include dissolved nutrients, algal dry weights, zooplankton and benthic invertebrate counts, algal biovolumes, and algal nutrient content for each of the 18 raceway ponds.

Hach chemistry kits were used to analyze nutrients in the water and algae. Light microscopy was used to enumerate algae and invertebrates. To calculate algal biovolumes, algal morphospecies were first counted, and then many micrographs were taken of each morphospecies. ImageJ was used to measured the dimensions of the algal cells and then geometric equations were used to calculate the mean biovolume of a cell of each morphospecies. Finally, this mean cell biovolume was used to calculate the total biovolume of each morphospecies in a sample. Please refer to the article for more details.